Since there were a few last minute withdrawals due to family situations there are only 9 crafters in this audition round. Since we are so few in number this season, there will be no one eliminated after these auditions. This is more of a bonus round than an audition for you all .

If you would like to try your hand at a season of SYTYC just send me an email at soyouthinkyourecrafty@gmail.com with a link to your blog. If I think you’re a good fit for the contest I’ll put your name on the current waiting list!

We have an awkward room located at the front of our house. I believe it is supposed to be a formal sitting room , but so far it has been an office, playroom and now a yoga/meditation room. I wanted to find an awesome seat for it, somewhere I could go and sit and read my books or knit. I looked all over pinterest and I found this old dresser turned bench.
It was love at first site. First a friend of mine needed to get rid of an old dresser and some nightstands and I offered to take them from her.

So I took this huge (ugly) white dresser and I dismantled it. I then painted what was left with a teal paint. I then aged the wood and applied a brown glaze with a dry brush technique. After everything had dried I took pre-cut plywood from home depot and added foam, all natural batting and purple crush velvet. I nailed the entire seat into the base. I then turned the old top into the new seat back. It was sturdy and matched seamlessly. I had to cut off some extra on each side for it to slide in and I ended up using these pieces for the arms. As a last touch I added antique buttons to the seat cushion. I love this piece, it is comfy, shabby chic and has useable storage.

Hi there, SYTYC fans! Today I present to you a dress that holds a lot of love behind it. I call it “the shabby spectrum” dress. Shabby because it’s made from rows of scrap fabric, and spectrum not only to describe the multitude of color but also a token/homage/observance of this being National Autism Awareness month. It’s very dear to me as my daughter was diagnosed in October 2010 with autism. And for those of you who don’t know, they do a C.A.R.S. test on children to determine where their autism lies. It’s called the spectrum and the ribbon for National Autism Awareness Month is a puzzle of colors. So a dress that looks sorta puzzle-pieced together in a cavalcade of rainbow bits which seemed mightily appropriate for my SYTYC audition entry! Plus it freed up some space in my enormous hoard of fabric scraps!

This was such a fun dress to make! I surrendered my dear black eyelet from it’s black fabric brethren where it’s spent a year of it’s life waiting to be released! So that in of itself got me giddy. Add to that the notion of surfacing some of my favorite “blast from the past” fabrics to let them shine once more, and you have a pretty pleased seamstress on your hands!

Don’t fret over all those little strips fraying either, because they are all cut on the bias so they’ll just become delightfully shabby after it’s washed.

Peekabooing their way through the eyelet bodice is a rainbow striped lining, and the neck is finished with a retro rainbow stripping detail where the strips are allowed to dangle and be woven haphazardly through little playful fingers. It zips invisibly up the side and buttons at the top straps.

The skirt is topstiched but then came the most fun part: crazy stitching! It’s a technique I have seen before and have been itching to try! The “crazy stitching” consists of a double threaded needle of two matching hues for each layer. I love that it makes it look more puzzle-y and a little less proper and a little more fun! I highly recommend all seamstresses to try doing this! After always being told to sew a straight line, it is completely liberating to just do whatever! The hem is simply more tiny little bias strips pieced together with two different rainbow-hued threads.

The hair band was braided with more strips of bias (are you getting the hint here and the little ballet slippers mimic the dress’s bodice and lining.with red glitter vinyl soles and laced up with more bias strips!

In addition to the dress, I also made a kinderquinn of my daughter (as part of my SYTYC entry!). The way I see it, if you’re going to make a duct tape dress form, you had better make it something you want to look at! So I made it out of aqua, purple, and alien-monstery duct tape rolls. I love it… as does she! It also allowed me to free up a few gallon bags of serger scraps to stuff her with!

So there you have it! A sweet little dress for my one of a kind prismatic little princess!

School is about to start back up and I desperately needed a new bag. I wanted one that was big enough to hold the binders and books for all three of my classes. And of course, I wanted it to be super cute to!

The construction was a beast. Probably because I just winged the whole thing. That’s just how I roll. I wanted pockets on the inside to hold pens and highlighters. There is also a pocket on the other side that can hold things like post it’s and index cards. The bottom is a square bottom so that it can hold everything. I then used some painters tape to paint the bottom a turquoise color.

I decided to use some of my sketches and paint them on a messenger bag. This took me about a week’s time because I worked on it after I got home from the office. I used a lot of different Tulip’s fabric paints, and fabric fusion glue, along with different types and colors of yarn, and I recycled a yellow and red t-shirt into yarn, also some sequins and acrylic gems.

I wanted to paint something inspirational, something that represents my heritage. I went for bold colors, glitter paints and included some of my handmade fabric flowers.

Here are some photos showing the different sides of the bag, the only part not decorated was the inside.

Here is my messenger bag, with a few messages here and there.

top photo shows the front of the flap, once you flip this up it reveals the second photo and the third photo shows the images on the back side of the bag. Here you can read the inspirational messages I decided to add.

The images on the top are from the two sides of the bag, and the bottom photos show what I did on the bottom of the bag and the strap to which I first painted completely with a light rose glitter paint then I glued the t-shirt yarn both in yellow and red to add some designs and finally took the multi-color ribbon and glued to all the edges of the strap.I hope you like my project, I put a lot of time and love to making something that represents my love for my culture.

My sister wanted some sort of cool artwork for her little boys’ bedroom. Since she has three little boys and they all love superheroes (I’m pretty sure the baby already thinks he’s Spiderman), she was thinking about something with a comic book feel. She started searching online and found a site where you could submit a photo of your child and have his or her face Photoshopped onto a comic book drawing, then printed onto a canvas to hang up on their wall. It sounded awesome, but it cost over $100 and was well out of her price range. So she called me and said, “If I send you some pictures of my kids in superhero costumes, can you make some sort of poster for their wall?” I told her I’d give it a try, and this is what I ended up with.

I used Photoshop Elements to extract the boys from the background of their photos, then ran the photos through a free online service that turns a photo into a comic. I created a cool comic book cityscape using a few Photoshop tricks and a free skyline silhouette. I added a few more comic book freebies (cool graphics and fonts), then printed the entire thing out as a 16×20 photo print.

I then adhered the print to a canvas, sanding the edges of the photograph to help it blend into the canvas. My nephews were unbelievably excited to see themselves on a real superhero poster and my sister is thrilled to have a cool piece of art for her home – all for under twelve bucks.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to be here auditioning! So, so, so, excited!

I really racked my brain for a project I thought was worthy enough to enter the auditions. At first I had something different picked out to enter. A friend of mine was over, so I asked her opinion about the project I wanted to enter. She liked it, but saw something else that I was working on and went crazy over it. She urged me that it was way better and that is what I should enter. So here it is!

If I had to give this a title I would call it a

Beatles Inspired Mixed Media Up-Cycled Collage

Now that is a snazzy title, huh?

I am afraid to say I have acquired a certain reputation for someone who will take your junk off of your hands. I am all about buying as little as possible, hand making gifts, and saving money every where! Waste not, want not, right? Well, when I tell you what went into making this you will not believe it.

The base of the piece is part of my Dad’s old pantry door (that I horded saved from the trash for some future unknown project)

The words are boards that the words are painted on are slats from my old Ikea bed (that my husband highly suggested I get rid of, “cause after all we don’t have the bed anymore!”).

So here is what I did in a nutshell:

First I painted the border with turquoise and white acrylic paint at the same time so it would blend nicely.

Next, I tore out pages from a book (that I keep for just that reason) and mod podged them on. This is the trick though- I mixed in a little bit of brown paint and water with the mod podge. I love the old look that it creates.

While that dried I wrapped the blocks in fabric and mod podged them on with the same brown concoction. The fabric was a very bright pattern, so it really helped to tone it down.

After everything was dry I hand-painted the words on each block with white acrylic paint, then outlined them in black.

Once everything was dry I glued the fabric blocks to the base and spray painted it with a clear acrylic.

I love the quote too!

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”-Lennon/McCartney

Those Beatles, they really knew what they were doing, huh?

Well, I hope you like my project as much as I do. If you do, vote for it! Thanks so much!

So, I have a fabric addiction. A serious one. And even though I pledged to buy less of
everything crafty at the start of this year, I have not kept to that resolution
very well at all. My mid-year’s resolution
is to at least start using my fabric, and STAT.
Since sewing bags can be complicated and time-consuming (and is made
more so by my unwillingness to follow patterns), I had to think of something
else. Of course, I made things more
complex than I needed to, but it could have been really easy. These framed, fabric-covered bulletin boards
can be as complex or as easy as you want to make them! Easy – make a funky pieced block – no need
to worry about straight lines. Easier –
topstitch along the pattern of your fabric and it will look like you spent
hours piecing it. And, easiest – find a
pretty fabric that needs no additional anything, and slap it all together
without a bit of sewing! I actually made all three in one day, between laundry loads and snack runs for the kidlets.

I love the fussy-cut pieced block – it turned out better
than I had hoped, considering I’m not a quilter and I have never even tried
string-piecing.I will definitely share
the step-by-step on what I did soon, but I bet there are some way smarter
tutorials out there – from actual quilters.Any kind of pieced block would work – I designed mine to fit into the
frame I was using, but if you quilt and have some random blocks laying around,
use them up on one of these great boards!And the topstitching was so fast and easy – it helped that I just happen
to own a piece of fabric perfectly suited to stitching straight lines across
it.My extensive upholstery fabric
collection came in handy when I wanted some fabric that would look good with no
embellishment necessary.

All you need to get started is an old frame or three (I buy
mine at Goodwill, and it doesn’t matter if the glass is cracked or missing
because you don’t use it). Find some
fabric, or if you don’t own any, buy some.
Lucky. And a bit of corkboard
will make this into really useful art. I
go back and forth between using the 12” square tiles which are a bit thicker
(but more costly) and the thinner, cheaper rolls.

I prepare my frames first.
Some of them look good enough that I just dust ‘em off. Others need some TLC, or in this case, a
couple coats of paint. Once they have
the first coat you can start on the sewing, or the not-sewing, as your case may
be, and take breaks to apply a second coat when the frames are dry. I save the base of the frame and use it to
measure my cork and to square up my fabric.
Then, just adhere all the layers with spray adhesive. I despise spray adhesive, but I can’t figure
out any better way to get this all together in a non-gloppy way. Return
the fabric-cork-backing sandwich to the frame (once everything is completely dry) and
then stand back and admire your new and useful wall art. Add a few push pins and you’ve got a gorgeous way to get organized! Wouldn’t this be a great gift for the dorm-bound people in your life?

My favorite projects involve taking something old and making it new again. Our guest room was never really finished when we moved into our house. It became a catch-all for random furniture and accessories. This vintage door-turned-headboard was the perfect starting point for finishing the room.

I love it when repurposed furnishings make you wonder about their past.
It makes me wish I knew the full story of the door’s history.

The door with all of its wonderful chippy paint was paired with some old
fence posts that used to hold up a barbed wire fence along our
property. Together, they’re ready to welcome some overnight guests!

“I am pretty much obsessed with taking pictures and sharing them on Instagram. My page is a glimpse of daily life: photos of the kids, things that crack me up, what we’re doing, and encounters with bacon.

The only downside is that the pictures get forgotten when hidden away on the Internet. I wanted to bring my online (imaginary) life into the real life.

These coasters were quick and easy to make with old tiles and other items I had on hand. And when your sons face isn’t holding your favorite beverage, the tile can be displayed as a piece of art. Cheers! ”

What a creative circle of women! I have to say I was most impressed by Craft #1, the dresser to bench conversion. Love the idea for sure although not fond of the dark paint and purple cushions, then again I love the brights.

Hi! I'm Tauni, host of So You Think You're Crafty. SYTYC is a head-to-head crafting competition - the first “reality” blog. Every 10 weeks a new group of crafters is selected. Each week the crafters are given a theme and YOU vote for your favorite. Read More…

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SYTYC may from time to time accept forms of cash advertising, sponsorship or other forms of compensation. Compensation received will not influence the editorial content. If I'm not honestly excited about a product, I won't write about it.